Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday admitted appeal of Zulfiqar Khan, director of NGO Theatre Age, against his conviction in three cases of sodomy.

Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday admitted appeal of Zulfiqar Khan, director of NGO Theatre Age, against his conviction in three cases of sodomy.

The high court bench of justice Raj Mohan Singh while staying the fine imposed on him has ordered listing of the matter as per its turn. The appeal was filed in one of the three cases, while in two other cases is yet to be filed.

It was on December 22, a Chandigarh trial court sentenced Khan to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for committing unnatural sex and one year rigorous imprisonment for exhibiting and circulating obscene objects to young persons in three cases. Of the five cases of sodomy against him, Zulfiqar was convicted under sections 377 (unnatural sex) and 292 (sale, distribution of obscene objects to young person) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in three cases.

The court had acquitted him of charges of 506 of the IPC (punishment for criminal intimidation). The imprisonment was to run concurrently.

In January, acting upon an application moved by Khan, the trial court had ordered that sentence would run concurrent in only two out of three cases, thus, effectively reducing the imprisonment from 21 years imprisonment to 14 years. Zulfiqar was arrested in July 2015 from his school in Sector 25, where he used to teach the underprivileged children. The arrest was made on the complaint by two boys that Zulfiqar forced them to have unnatural sex.